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Authors: John Shannon
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taken off for a while? Or where she’d go?”
“No, but she big girl. Maybe you talk to her boyfriend Tommy Xuan.”
It was pronounced Swan, or thereabouts, and it was the first he’d heard of a boyfriend.
“Or you talk to Frankie Fen. I get her job with him, too, on his big cuckoo bridge idea.”
“I saw the designs out in front.”
She poured herself some more coffee and he held out his cup. It was the first time he’d asked for seconds in a long time. He’d have to find out her brand of beans and tell the ad people.
“The newspaper said people found the design too Chinese,” he suggested.
She snorted. “I tell him right in beginning it not going to go flying. Not ’cause the design too Chinese, ’cause Frankie Fen too Chinese. He build all two of these malls here and he call himself the Godfather of Little Saigon. He got one big head.”
“Isn’t he from Viet Nam?”
“I got bulldog from England, too, but it not Englishman. Frankie Fen could draw that bridge like ding-a-ling French castle at Disneyland and it still too Chinese because Frankie Fen draw it. Vietnamese don’t like Chinese deep down, that just the way it is.”
“You think he’s in today?”
“No, he working on apartment building in Fullerton. I get you address. You go see Tommy Xuan and then you go see Frankie Fen and then you come back and we talk about me some more. I’m pretty interesting.”
“You can say that again.”
“I’m pretty interesting,” she said, absolutely without irony. It would be fun to introduce her to a Marx Brothers film, he thought, and see what happened.
He found his car in the mall lot, between a new Honda and a new Toyota. His beat-up Concord was probably the oldest and ugliest car in the whole lot. It had one other distinction over the others, it had a note tucked under the windshield wiper, facing in to the driver’s seat.
GO WAY BIG CUNT , OR ELS , it said.
“Must be for someone else,” he said aloud, but he folded it and put it in his pocket.
It was just about the ugliest animal he had ever seen and it was growling at him and kicking stiff-legged in the dirt like an angry bull. The dog was the size of goat but the skin was the size of a pony, and there was nowhere for the extra flesh to go except to bunch up.
“Must have got a whiff of my dog,” Jack Liffey said. “He’s half coyote.”
“Attila doesn’t have to have a reason. The shar-pei is notoriously protective. He started out with my wife and he wouldn’t even let me get close for months. Heel!”
The leash went slack and the dog finally decided to lead up the trail into the yellow hillside.
He smelled sagebrush and something else, sweet and clean, on the breezy air. There was a shrill scream from below and a Marine F/A-18 swooped up off the runway and into a little show-off turn and then climbed away. He braced for the sound of the second one. They always traveled in pairs. It came, and the dog didn’t like it much either.
“The dog’s got short-man’s syndrome,” Marty Spence said when they could talk again. “Challenges anything that moves. I think it’s overbreeding. They only brought seven of them over from China and that’s a pretty small gene pool.”
Marty Spence certainly didn’t have short-man syndrome. He was graying a bit, but he was tall and lithe, like somebody who played tennis three times a day. Jack Liffey had called him from a pay phone, using Mike Lewis’s name. They’d agreed to meet on a dirt pad off a country road behind the Marine Air Station, the unofficial trailhead where he walked his dog on his afternoon off from teaching.
“Be careful if you pet it. Their skin isn’t like other dogs and a lot of people are allergic. It’s oily and the hair is brittle, like horsehair.”
“Why do people have them?”
“Why did we wear platform shoes in the ’70s? You’ll have to ask my wife.”
“I didn’t,” Jack Liffey said. “But I did have a chartreuse Nehru shirt.”
“My
“No, but she big girl. Maybe you talk to her boyfriend Tommy Xuan.”
It was pronounced Swan, or thereabouts, and it was the first he’d heard of a boyfriend.
“Or you talk to Frankie Fen. I get her job with him, too, on his big cuckoo bridge idea.”
“I saw the designs out in front.”
She poured herself some more coffee and he held out his cup. It was the first time he’d asked for seconds in a long time. He’d have to find out her brand of beans and tell the ad people.
“The newspaper said people found the design too Chinese,” he suggested.
She snorted. “I tell him right in beginning it not going to go flying. Not ’cause the design too Chinese, ’cause Frankie Fen too Chinese. He build all two of these malls here and he call himself the Godfather of Little Saigon. He got one big head.”
“Isn’t he from Viet Nam?”
“I got bulldog from England, too, but it not Englishman. Frankie Fen could draw that bridge like ding-a-ling French castle at Disneyland and it still too Chinese because Frankie Fen draw it. Vietnamese don’t like Chinese deep down, that just the way it is.”
“You think he’s in today?”
“No, he working on apartment building in Fullerton. I get you address. You go see Tommy Xuan and then you go see Frankie Fen and then you come back and we talk about me some more. I’m pretty interesting.”
“You can say that again.”
“I’m pretty interesting,” she said, absolutely without irony. It would be fun to introduce her to a Marx Brothers film, he thought, and see what happened.
He found his car in the mall lot, between a new Honda and a new Toyota. His beat-up Concord was probably the oldest and ugliest car in the whole lot. It had one other distinction over the others, it had a note tucked under the windshield wiper, facing in to the driver’s seat.
GO WAY BIG CUNT , OR ELS , it said.
“Must be for someone else,” he said aloud, but he folded it and put it in his pocket.
It was just about the ugliest animal he had ever seen and it was growling at him and kicking stiff-legged in the dirt like an angry bull. The dog was the size of goat but the skin was the size of a pony, and there was nowhere for the extra flesh to go except to bunch up.
“Must have got a whiff of my dog,” Jack Liffey said. “He’s half coyote.”
“Attila doesn’t have to have a reason. The shar-pei is notoriously protective. He started out with my wife and he wouldn’t even let me get close for months. Heel!”
The leash went slack and the dog finally decided to lead up the trail into the yellow hillside.
He smelled sagebrush and something else, sweet and clean, on the breezy air. There was a shrill scream from below and a Marine F/A-18 swooped up off the runway and into a little show-off turn and then climbed away. He braced for the sound of the second one. They always traveled in pairs. It came, and the dog didn’t like it much either.
“The dog’s got short-man’s syndrome,” Marty Spence said when they could talk again. “Challenges anything that moves. I think it’s overbreeding. They only brought seven of them over from China and that’s a pretty small gene pool.”
Marty Spence certainly didn’t have short-man syndrome. He was graying a bit, but he was tall and lithe, like somebody who played tennis three times a day. Jack Liffey had called him from a pay phone, using Mike Lewis’s name. They’d agreed to meet on a dirt pad off a country road behind the Marine Air Station, the unofficial trailhead where he walked his dog on his afternoon off from teaching.
“Be careful if you pet it. Their skin isn’t like other dogs and a lot of people are allergic. It’s oily and the hair is brittle, like horsehair.”
“Why do people have them?”
“Why did we wear platform shoes in the ’70s? You’ll have to ask my wife.”
“I didn’t,” Jack Liffey said. “But I did have a chartreuse Nehru shirt.”
“My
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